falling into fall.

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So recently we got a working bath tub. Now that the tub is finally finished and installed, she’s a beaut!

the tub!

This is kind of a big deal, because we didn’t just get a bath tub, we got running water. We (rather I) hadn’t hooked up the water because there was no faucet where the tub would be, so once hooked up with water pressure, it would have sprayed out of the open-ended pipes into our Airstream.

We also recently got full-time water at the hydrant by Argie. There was a leak in the water line at the hydrant located by the chicken coop, which caused the water pump in the main house to come on all night. My mom couldn’t sleep through the water pump running, so she’d turn it off every night. So, if we wanted to have running water at our hydrant, we had to go turn on the water at the house.

For fresh water, we had been using the hydrant outside to fill up a 6 gallon water reservoir that we kept inside. For doing dishes, we would carry back a 5-gallon bucket of hot water from my folks house, because not having running water also means not having any hot water.

Thus, from December ’15 to October’16, we had no running water. I guess that’s pretty cool. We were like cave dwellers!

It’s hard to express how awesome it is to have running water. To be quite frank, doing the dishes sucked without running water. We didn’t really realize it at the time, but lugging around those buckets of water and doing the dishes old school style had put stress on our relationship. Designating dish duty was a constant fight about whose turn it was to do them because it was such an ordeal, it always felt like it had just been our turn.

We dreaded doing the dishes, but now we happily do each others dishes and are getting along much better without the stress of figuring out whose turn it is to do them!

HOLY SHUCKS I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW NICE IT IS TO HAVE RUNNING WATER!!

Also, it’s definitely pretty excellent to be able to bathe in your own home and not have to go to your parents’ house. If you’d like to get an equal appreciation for running water in your home, don’t use it for TEN MONTHS. I believe I have never felt so passionate about writing about an event in one of these blogs as I do about the running water.

I still have to finish fixing the broken hydrant that was causing the water leak, but it’s got a stopper on the water line where the hydrant was, and (fingers crossed) I don’t think we’ll have to live without running water in Argie again, at least not in her current location (aside from the winter months when we’ll have to turn the water off at the hydrant and unhook the hose to keep everything from freezing on really cold days and nights).

Everything else is going excellently on all fronts! The pigs are growing nicely. Now that Halloween is over, everywhere that sold pumpkins is happy to have you take away the rotten ones (or really any of them for that matter). The nursery down the road let me drive my truck up and down the rows picking up unsightly pumpkins.

Daisy’s a little jealous when it comes to the pigs, so she likes to be wherever I am to make sure she gets enough attention.

The pigs love them!

the pigs know what’s going to happen next…pumpkin snacks!

Since we’re getting so many pumpkins, there are usually a couple carve-able ones in the mix.

Happy Halloween!

It’s excellent whenever I can get free food for the pigs nowadays, because they can easily eat $60 worth of feed in one week. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but I do the flowers (courtesy of my neighbor, Nancy Hugo, who has an AMAZING garden) at a local restaurant, The Caboose, once a week. In exchange, the head chef saves me leftover food for the piggies.

with some old dead onesfresh for the week!they’re so colorful!

As a side note, we fully recommend dining at The Caboose. It’s a great farm-to-table restaurant in the center of the Center of the Universe, and priced very well. We easily eat there once a week. Also, it sits on the train tracks is historic downtown Ashland.

Pig harvesting is planned for December. We’re going to process them ourselves. It’ll be a little hard on me, I reckon. I’ve been their primary caretaker for all of their lives. I’ve tried not to get too close to them…

they are SOO big. fatboy (pictured) is the biggest.

My outlook on it is that we bought them to raise, harvest, and eat. It’s up to us to raise them so they can live the most enjoyable life possible until the harvest day comes. Maybe this experience will change my outlook. Time will tell.

As for other projects, I made a new shelf for our DVDs over the bed. It’s maple.

constantine!

Also, I whipped up a few picture frames to display some pictures of our friends.

Danielle and I even managed to use a bonus day off to do some prep work to get the privy ready for winter.

all covered up and ready for siding!doing something useful.

So a few blog posts ago I made a list of the next important stuff for me to do:

-the bath tub (done)

-shelves in the kitchen (done)

-gas stove in the kitchen (NUTS, I’ve actually got to work on it now)

and I should add to the list:

-linen closet

-put siding on the outhouse

We’ve been using this IKEA red rack to store all our linens, towels, etc. I did recently build a floor surface under the rack, so now I can finally build a proper linen storage area.

the “linen closet” with new platform below

But since the stove was on my list first, I’ve got to take care of that first. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not looking forward to working on the stove. We’ve got a plug-in burner and a plug-in pan for cooking stove-top type stuff, but I know Danielle is ready (beyond ready) to have an oven, and I’m ready for her to cook some tasty oven goodies!

To hold her over, I built her a spice rack for her birthday (very cliche, but very necessary, too!), and she seems pretty excited about it. It is also made of maple.

In the meantime, I’ll be lookin’ to work on the stove and get the outhouse all covered, so hopefully by the next post, we’ll be cooking with gas and keeping warm while we poop this winter!